Travel Blog Mongolia

Happy new year to all of you! Hope you all had a great start in the day! Yeah I had a very special one – in Mongolia! And the first one since a few years without work… Felt a bit strange 😀 But to begin with Christmas and the time towards the new year: Mongolians wish for christmas and new year the same words: Шинэ жилийн мэнд хүргэе!

#christmaseve #timebetweentheyears

Christmas eve and the 25th and 26th have been great as well, and with more Christmas parties I have ever had 😀 24th in the evening we went to a Mongolian BBQ all you can eat thing, the 25th we celebrated Australian Christmas with the secret Santa game (Germans know it under the word “wichteln”) and on Saturday I had the Christmas party of my grad 9ers. It seemed more like a prom night and I really felt underdressed 😀 We played several funny games such as counting one number in German and continuing with one in Mongolian. This continued in the alternating….. guess who won? – yeah me 😀 Anyway, one thing I can in Mongolian. And some more stuff! Enough to survive in everyday life.
My favourite game of the day was musical chairs (the German name is way better: Reise nach Jerusalem). Teacher, school Manager and colleagues from the Goethe Institute were included. This party was nice, but had nothing in common with a German school Christmas party except maybe that Santa came (actually a grade 11 boy dressed as Santa) and brought presents. Tsolmon, one of my teacher’s pet 😀 … You haven’t heard about this, as I know that…. I do not only explore the relation between the pupils, but also their names and I am really happy that they love it when we try to speak de-ngli-lian (deutsch-english-mongolian). It kinda works.

Ok well the time between Christmas and New Year was mostly calm, even here it is no holiday time and we had to work (just a little bit). Originally neither Christmas nor New Year is a traditional festivity in Mongolia but as the western flair comes over most of the people do celebrate both in some way, some more weird than others… This is why all my plans concerning my work groups after school changed. As usual here. And then I realized that I have just around 20 days of work left. Wow!

#newyearseve

New Years Eve we finally celebrated in Malte’s flat. He is by the way in Russia with Jessy for holidays and he was so selfless to let us his flat for the time he was not there ☺ Awesome for Kirsten and me to get some shared flat style back! I kinda miss this! We cooked something together (very off-the-wall but nice), talked a bit and before you can say knife it was time to go to the Sukkhbatar Square (the middle of the city) to watch the firework! It was amazing and even we all have been very critical about being able to see anything trough the thick yucky smog! Not only the firework was amazing, there were also an eagle, a camel and some reindeers on the square, we realized that sparkling wine turns straight into snow when you spill it!

But here see yourselve!

By the way it was supposed to be the coldest city in the world yesterday as at the Northern Pole it was just around 0 °C.

#holidaysarecoming!!!

Just one more day on Monday and then I have two weeks off ☺ Good for me because on the one hand I need to get some more input for my economy exam that comes up right after my arrival in Germany/ Giessen at the beginning of march. Furthermore, I am thinking of starting at the half marathon Frankfurt: on the one hand to see where I stand right now, I feel so slow running either up those crazy hills at minus 30 degree or indoor on the treadmill and on the other hand to have at least a goal to torture myself a bit more on the treadmill 😀 And therefore I do need indeed some time! Also swim and bike training, and of course the crucial part in winter athletics and stretching, yoga needs a bit more of a go. So well of course no boring holidays being stuck in the library during the day and training in morning and evening ☺

Furthermore I need to get all the things done which I would love to do before leaving… There is still a lot on my to do list:
Karaoke
Cinema – the new star wars
Museum
French discussion round
Game evening
Quiz night
Shopping the last souvenirs
I might have forgotten this one or another….

I hope that the deregistration at the Immigration Office will work out well. Kind of strange things happened to Gregor in Erdenet and also with Jonas who did not had an alienation card had to go out of the country and then come back as a tourist.

This is it so far from the other end of the world. Stay tuned and see ya soon,

Yours Maren